Seeing Isn’t Always Believing

Consumers are not strangers to seeing products prettied up to make them look more attractive. Movies have trailers that make them look cooler, candy comes in shiny colorful packaging . For a long time the videogame industry remained somewhat immune. Sure the box art got you excited, but the screens and trailers you saw pretty much brought you down to earth and gave you a good idea what to expect. Somewhere in the last generation things started changing. Look up screenshots for Killzone and Halo 2 as well, they never looked quite that sharp while playing them, did they?

It gets even worse as we enter the next generation, the most blatant example probably being the infamous Killzone video presentation from E3 2005. It did its job though, it simultaneously set the visual standard for the next generation (whether that standard is attainable or not remains to be seen) and put the PS3 at the top of the power heap in the minds of many. But the video also did a few other things, things that have and will continue to influence the industry for a while to come.

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Consumers are not strangers to seeing products prettied up to make them look more attractive. Movies have trailers that make them look cooler, candy comes in shiny colorful packaging . For a long time the videogame industry remained somewhat immune. Sure the box art got you excited, but the screens and trailers you saw pretty much brought you down to earth and gave you a good idea what to expect. Somewhere in the last generation things started changing. Look up screenshots for Killzone and Halo 2 as well, they never looked quite that sharp while playing them, did they?

It gets even worse as we enter the next generation, the most blatant example probably being the infamous Killzone video presentation from E3 2005. It did its job though, it simultaneously set the visual standard for the next generation (whether that standard is attainable or not remains to be seen) and put the PS3 at the top of the power heap in the minds of many. But the video also did a few other things, things that have and will continue to influence the industry for a while to come.

It flung Guerrilla straight into the stratosphere: From being an average developer that made an enjoyable but ultimately flawed PS2 game they suddenly became a top tier studio upon which many PlayStation fans would pin their hopes, a watermark for the next generation. It remains to be seen whether they’ll live up to that standard.

It made it that much harder for us to trust developers: I don’t know about you but just about every time I see a great looking screenshot or trailer these days I’m constantly looking for the telltale signs of deception. Are there jaggies? Low res textures? Clipping? An over abundance of post processing effects? Is it real time? And quite frankly it’s sickening, a developer should never have to add a disclaimer ahead of their video stating that what we are seeing is in fact real time as Factor 5 did with their first footage of Lair. One could argue that it’s good we’re at last reaching a stage where real time graphics are finally becoming indistinguishable from their pre-rendered counterparts, but they would be wrong because we don’t even know what level of graphical fidelity to really expect from this generation. Take a look at this next batch of screens from Too Human:

You know what would be awesome? If the game actually, really looked like that. It doesn’t, at least not yet.

Here’s an even worse offender:

If there’s actual real time footage of Motorstorm available now, why can’t we find it on the net? Simple, it doesn’t look like it did last year.

It made it that much harder for honest developers to truly impress: The Killzone video raised the bar so ludicrously high that already jaded gamers now require something even more off the hook to really jolt them. I love the MGS:4 trailer and think it’s utterly amazing, but I have to admit to being mildly disappointed that it didn’t match the Killzone trailer in terms of visual fidelity. I took solace in the fact that Kojima has never, and will never lie to gamers about what’s technically possible in his games.

Now it has to be said that perhaps I’m holding Kojima and his team of technical wizards to an unattainably high standard, but you can’t deny that every time you see a trailer for a new game that looks impressive you’re hoping and praying that it’s real time.

It opended the doors for more of its kind.

Brothers In Arms 3: Hells Highway

The first trailer for Brothers In Arms 3 was shot from a first person perspective, very similar to the Killzone video and what we would expect from in-game footage. Even worse though was the fact that this “target render” had what seemed to be a fully functioning HUD… were we not supposed to think that was real time?

Madden 06

More than enough has been said about EA’s Madden target video, but it’s still a little depressing to see what was promised and what it ended up looking like. When are we going to see someone live up to their word?

At what point does it stop being promotional and start becoming false advertising? Just a few months ago ads for Call of Duty 2 and Call of Duty: Big Red One were banned in the UK because they featured misleading computer generated footage that aped real time camera angles.

But why do they do it if they know we’ll find out eventually? Well, “eventually” usually means you’ve bought the game and are sitting down to play it. And let’s be honest here – gamers aren’t the most pro-active bunch, we’ll bitch and moan a little and then forget all about it when the next shiny game appears from the very same “studio X” that humped us last time.

Another less cynical reason why this is done is that there really is a genuine need for  “target videos”. It really does help to have a visual bar to aim for, but the question still remains whether it’s ethically acceptable to attempt to pass this off as in-game footage.

And then there’s the PSP. Routinely, developers will take screens directly from dev kits, with resolution and image quality much higher than the PSP’s screen is actually capable of displaying. This practice has become more and more commonplace, and really I find nothing wrong with it since the PSP screen resolution is so low that it actually helps to have these screens blown up. But can we really expect games like Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core to look quite this good?

   

Is Square’s Final Fantasy team really that much more talented than Kojima’s?

The worst byproduct of this whole thing is the trust that has been broken. What do you guys think?